TO THE DAWNLANDSCAPERECLININGTOMBTHE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEACHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASONCOUPLET OF THE WINE GLASSDAWN EARTHFIVE O’ CLOCKFROM THE VALLEYON THE ROADSEASONSTHE MIRROR AND THE WORLD THE DREAM IN A CELLAR THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINETHIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR TODAY I’VE WALKEDYES, LIKE THE WINDS MARKED BY THE ROSEBOUQUET ON THE FAR SHORETHE WIND-UP BIRDLAST POEM

TO THE DAWN

The morning collapses like a stack of platesin thousands of shards of porcelain and of hoursand of bellsand cascadesright up to the zinc of this very poor bistrowhere the stars persist in the night of the café

She isn’t poor, this onewith her evening dress soiled and muddiedbut rich with realities of morningwith the intoxication of her bloodand with the perfume of her breath which no insomnia can spoil rich with herself and all the morningspast, present and futurerich with herself and the sleep which wins herwith sleep rigid like mahoganywith sleep and the morning of herselfand with all her life, which reckons itselfonly by mornings, brilliant dawnscascades, sleeps,living nights

she is rich, that oneeven if she holds out her handand must sleep in the crisp morningin her muddied dresson a deserted bed.

LANDSCAPE

I’d dreamed of love: dream still, but love’s no longeras this twist of lilac-rose whose perfumes mingledcharge the forest air where somewhere burnsa flame marking paths which never turn.

On the right, the sky, on the left, the sea.And before my eyes, the grass and its flowers.A cloud, on its way, follows its vertical pathparallel to the horizon’s plumb-level,parallel to the horseman.The horse runs towards the immense fallas the other rises, interminably.How simple and strange everything is!Lying on my leftI lose interest in the landscapeand think only of very vague thingsvery vague and very happylike the weary look which one allows wanderthrough the beautiful afternoon of summerfrom here, from there,in the delirium of the pointless.

TOMB

By dint of loving, I have lost myself in the ocean. And what an ocean!A tempest of laughter and tears.If you board a boat, take care to look at the figure on the prow which will fix you with an eye eaten away by the swell and the salt water.But what am I saying? The shows of love scarcely interest me. I no longer want to be anything but a sail carried by the monsoon wind towards the unknown continents where I will find only one person. She for whom you will have a ready-made name.

I undress as does an explorer lost on an island and I remain motionless like a figure on a prow.Hail to you, wide wind, and you, desert, and you, forgetfulness.

I will be forgotten. Some day, one will not know my name, but I will know theirs. One evening, covered in glory and rich, I will return, will knock on their door, completely naked, but they will not answer me, having opened the door, when I appear to their eyes.

I have won, at least, the sense of perpetuity. Not those, ridiculous, the concessions of the cemetery.I wish in vain for the appearance of the guillotine, but I can only offer to the bloodthirsty mob my desire for suicide.

Revolution! You will shine only after my death, on the immense square of white marble which will cover my huge corpse.France is a nest of wasps, Europe a rotten field, and the world a peninsula of my consciousness.

But happily there remain to me the stars, and the awareness of my moral grandeur opposed to the thousand obstacles which the world supplies for my love.

THE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEA

The anemone who reigned over the seastill reigns, that’s understoodbut so little she’s lostshe’s lost at the bottom of the seasshe remembers her diamondssuspended in a rainbowsuspended in the pinkand the oysters yawn around herto offer her pearlsbut the anemone who reigned over the seahardly reigns anymore, and the iron anchorhas bitten her cruelly and she will shortly die.

CHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON

Nothing anymore comes closer to inspirationthan the drunkenness of a spring morning,Than the desire for a woman.No longer to be oneself, to be everyone.To place one’s feet on the earth with agility.To savour the air we breathe.

I sing this evening not about what we must fightbut what we must defend.The pleasures of life.The wine we drink with our friends.Love.A fire in winter.The river cool in summer.The bread and meat of each meal.The refrain one’s sings on a walk.The bed where one sleeps.The sleep, without dream or twist, without the anguishof tomorrow

Spare time.The freedom of a changing sky.The feeling of dignity and many other thingswhich one refuses to hand over to others.

I love and sing the blossoming spring.I love and sing summer with its fruits.I love and sing the joy of living.I love and sing the springtime.I love and sing summer, the season I was born.

COUPLET OF THE WINE GLASS

When the train leaves don’t wave your hand,not your handkerchief, nor your umbrellabut fill a glass of wineand throw at the train whose slatted sides sing,the long flame of wine,the bloody flame of the wine like your tongueand share with itthe palace and the bedof your lips and your mouth.

DAWN

The greasy night, leaning at the edge of its chasms,,contemplates the gardens of the disappearing day.More briefly than the light, on the blade of the crime,they have flourished. Already fades the portraitof a world which death harasses and pushes.How they blaze, the lighthouses, the pyres,the far-off suns, the preordained comets!And yet only, near the bed and its dying burden,nightlights, trembling in the current of the airfrom those gates open to earth and immensity.all is night, all is dead, all is alone, but what does it matterif one has for an instant, under the summer sun,the illusion of love and abundance.Come, misunderstood and deceiving night, and tell usif fevered kisses, hollow studiesare wiser here than the kneeling prayer of the coward and the sickly.

The greasy night has fallen in familiar dropswhere the day will follow in a docile fallfor already it is lifting on the hills its naked body.It bathes in the spring, it crosses the valley,its powerful reflection penetrates the sea.The procession of sounds are taking flightto sing the return of the beautiful adolescent.

Put out the fires, disperse the ashes,the day is ready to be lived, the hour to be plucked.

EARTH

One day after another,wave after wave.Where do you go? Where do you all go?Earth murdered by so many errant men!Earth enriched by the corpses of so many men.But the earth is us,we are not on itbut forever in it.

FIVE O’ CLOCK

At five in the morning on a new and empty streetI hear the sound of a car moving off.A fire alarm has its glass broken and the debrisof glass gleams in the gutter.

On the cobbles is a pool of blood and a wisp of smoke dissolves in the air.Hey there! Hey there! Tell me what’s happened.Waken up! I want to know what’s going on.Tell me about these men’s adventures.

FROM THE VALLEY

At the detour of the footpath in the mountainthe carcase of a mule that died last yearunder the too-heavy load it borehas finally whitened in the leaden sun.

The scent of thyme and the hum of insectsfill the air intoxicates of the travellerwho feels time hesitate as he follows his routeand the world vacillate in the heat.

In the valley, at the bottom of the steep slopes,mules are trotting pastwith the noise of their little bells and their shoes.

In a farmyard men are surroundinga ewe which has just given birth; one liftsto the sky a lamb astonished by life.

ON THE ROAD

Sometimes on the road one comes across vineswhose ripe grapes are near at hand -They’re good! And let’s leave for who knows where tomorrow?for the leaf resembles the hand by its lines.

But let’s cherish the vines where one reads the sacredsigns of youth and human desires,the wine is drunk, let’s leave, let’s retake the pathwhich is born with the song of the cock and dies with the swan’s.

There remains however the imprint of our glasseson the ironed tablecloth. At the hands of the washerwomanthe satin will soon part in the flow of water.

So go the oaths; sweet girl who sings,we’ll raise a toast to the honour of rogues.Keep filling our glasses to the end of the cask.

SEASONS

The day is in its place and flows at the far end of timeunless the living being rises across spacesstacked in the memory and relievingthe brain and the heart of the burden of stubborn remembrances.

Beings, powerful beings, your very name passes,to be and have been, pastimes and springtime,it goes, it’s gone like an endless waterwithout scars, without witnesses, without ponds.

Seasons, you cherish at least the grain of wheatwhich must moan until the days of thaw; and the keyto open for departure the carters’ gates.

The stars in the sky by you are gatheredthe years soon move to an end, and the weighed-down stepshobble on the paths leading back to the frontiers.

THE MIRROR AND THE WORLD

Each day with its keen teethtime tears little by little the silveringof this mirror and restoresto space a new plunder.

The landscape appearingwith its sky and distancefrees a reflection and invitesNarcissus to live the uncertain,the limpid, the beautiful journeybetween evening and morning.

THE DREAM IN A CELLAR

All the bottles were broken in this cellarso the smell of wine drunk by the sand roselike and October mist above the old quaysand the saltpetre walls were yellow with lava.

The spider spinning her web balancedher pig-like belly swollen by the fumesin the manner of a frigate at the hour when the sealaps and bursts in the shade with the noise of an abscess.

Beautiful frigate with the fabulous name of a loveryour siren at the prow with her well-combed hairwould have handed you over to the spiders’ fangsyou suddenly in the web; and numerous

your sails which swell with tiny North windspushing you, white, to the assaults of twilightsblack as a sea disturbed, streakingthe foam which coils itself in the neck of the whirlwind,

beautiful frigate, white as the shirta washerwoman forgot, left in a fieldon a drying line on a starless night,beautiful frigate sailing to marvellous promises.

For no other noise is heard in this dungeonthan the water crying within the sonorous movementsand the sound of a latecomer’s steps rising stillwho dreams of the sweetnesses of a warm bed

THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINE

The tree that drinks winewants us to sleep in its shadelike the stag and the rabbitfed on cucumber and thyme

The tree which drinks wineis a well-known palgood for morning and eveningand all our cavalcade days

The tree which drinks winetold us this morningno need to tell the futurenot every day is Tuesday

The tree that drinks winepours it to the entire earthit’s not stupid it’s craftyand its shadow will be the last

And its shadow will be the laston the earth if it’s still thereand on the earth and the seathe second of the final dawn.

THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR

This heart which hated war, see how it beatsfor combat and battle!This heart which only beat to the rhythm of the seas,those of the seasons, to those of the hours of day and night,How it swells and sends through the veins a bloodburning with saltpetre and hatredAnd brings such a noise to the brain that the eardrumswhistleAnd it’s impossible that this noise will not pour out into the townand the countryAs the sound of a bell calls to riot and combat.Listen, I hear what is coming back to me in its echoes.But no, it is the sound of other hearts, millions of other heartsbeating like mine across France.They beat, all these hearts, with the same rhythm,the same needTheir sound is that of the sea assaulting the cliffsAnd all that blood carries to millions of brainsthe same word of command:Rise against Hitler and death to his partisans!Nevertheless this heart hated war and beatto the rhythm of the seasons,But a single word: Liberty was enough to wakenthe old angersAnd millions of Frenchmen prepare themselves in the shadowsfor the need which the coming dawn will impose on them.For these hearts which hated war were beating for freedomwith the same rhythm as the seasons and the seas,as day and night.

How lovely they were, the trees in flower,the chestnut blossoms that rained the day he died.With my friend I have walked.

Now I know the dead a little better,I’ve seen plenty of undertakers’ assistantsbut I don’t go too close to them.

Which is why all day todayI’ve walked with my friend.He found me grown a little older,

slightly aged, but he told me‘You too will come where I am,some Saturday or Sunday’:

I looked at the trees in flower,at the river passing under the bridgeand suddenly I saw I was alone.

And so I came back among the living.

YES, LIKE THE WINDSMARKED BY THE ROSE

Yes, like the winds marked by the rosethere is a sense of space and time,if there is one there are a thousand or moreso many that they can’t all be felt.

For who of us hasn’t imagined or sensedshadows wandering outside geometries,universes escaping from our senses?

At the meeting points of oblique roadswe hear it fading, the sound of a horn,always reborn, always identical.

This vision of the sky and the rose,it becomes absorbed and dissolves in the airlike the sounds which make our flesh trembleor the glimmers under our closed eyelids.

We collide with other universeswithout feeling, seeing or hearing them,in the hollow summer, the peaks of winterother seasons fall on us in ashes.

While with the winds marked by the rosethe door slams and the flagpole creaksthe sail fills and for no visible reasonan absurd presence imposes itself on us,material, restless and indifferent.

BOUQUET

Three thoughts three poppies three worriesthree worries three roses three carnationsthe three roses for my lovethe three carnations for my friendthe three poppies for the little girl so sadthe three thoughts for my palthe three worries for myself.

ON THE FAR SHORE

The blind man stretched his hand out to the queenthe queen gave to him her mouthmiracles, you wilt along my path!My friends are muzzledwhat use is it to speak the language of the eyes and handsI’m compiling a dictionary of an unknown languageits alphabet like the reverberations along the avenueI am the slave of certain distinguished lettersletters of hate I’ve written you allit was in AugustI was wondering if I was capable of love or hatemy fountain pen wrote at my dictationwhether it willed or notin a women’s penal colony in the tropicsit’s there my beloved must be foundthe blade makes a nick in her large neckthe trees shed and become handswhen I have neither feet nor handsI’ll still have wingsO crimes what difference is there between youand the deaths of roses?One day I’ll be a surprising loverwomen will all love mebut I’ve such fear of not understanding.

THE WIND-UP BIRD

The bird with the scorched headwhich sang at nightwhich woke the childwhich lost its feathers in the inkwell

The bird with its feet in 7 placeswhich broke the disheswhich ruined the hatswhich came back from Suresnes

The bird the wind-up birdwas lost its keyits key of fieldsits vault key

Now you know why it doesn’t sing anymore

LAST POEM

I have so fiercely dreamedof you, so walked, so spoken,so loved your shadow that nothingof you remains, not the least token

and nothing is left to me but to beshadow among shadow, the hundredthpart: to be the shadow that will fastento your steps in the sun.

JEAN TARDIEU

A WOMAN A BIRDFLOWERS AND ABYSSTHE FALSE SAILOR EVEN THOUGHTHE LITTLE OPTIMISTMIDDAYUNKNOWN JUSTICEPETRIFIED DAYSTHE MASKPRESENCEAPARTMENTSTHE SOUND OF THE SEATHE SUFFOCATED GODSCHRONICLECROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARESDAYSTHE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACEEPITAPHHELL AT HOME PERILS OF MEMORYHOLDERLIN’S GRAVEWHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEARTTHE CHILD-EXECUTIONERI DON’T EXPECTMEMENTO MORINATUREIS IT A BEAST?NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHERON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGEDILEMMATHE IMMOBILE WORLDTIME GONEWE WILL GO NO FURTHERISLE DE FRANCE

A WOMAN A BIRD

The great bird which flies above the plainwith the same rhythm as the hollows and the woodswe have watched a long time glide in an absolute skywhich was neither day nor night.A stork? An eagle? Everything together,the silent voice of the barn-owland this royal wingspanof a god which made itself a bird…

Our eyes turned about an instantsuddenly saw the marvel descendit was the daughter of dawn and desirean angel in our furrow fallen with a bodymore feminine than love itself and long, longplacing her feet scarcely on the soil for the wind of her wingslifted her again. At last the smooth and white plumageon this woman of crystal folded itself back. She seemed not to see usnor to be surprised that a lakespread out before her steps … alreadyshe dived smiling to herselfhappy to remember the previous elementsand a time without limit … she wove in that transparent waterthe signs of an unknown languagethen, shaking herself, surrounded by pearlsnewly brilliant and icyshe stamped the ground with her feet … so I see her stillleaning slightly forwardand already almost detachedjust as we have seen her rise and disappear into the blue

From that time I have knownthrough what subtle will and secret movementswe can fly when all else sleeps.

FLOWERS AND ABYSS

IUnder the flowers known to me there is no plainbut the black milk of the unknown abyss;in my bitter dream I return them to the night,they descend, they extinguish themselves slowly.

IIA house advances slowlyat the flower-covered side of the abyssits smoke already turns blue …

Ah! That it be savedby words, before its falland that it fall into the spiritwithout noise, without suffering!

IIIIndolent maidwho passes close to the flowershear the abyss thunder!The lightning of originsilluminates the colours.

Silence, lightning flash, future,hair glowing,I do not know what to dowith such a splendour.

IVTwo hands which have lost the track of a faceapproach, scenting the shadow in searchof a form once human. But the maskis filled by the abyss.The terrified hands withdrawand take with them the flowers.

VTrees, to win the terrible favours of the abysswe will ascend on the inside as far as our flowers.So the wind, so the autumn, soour accomplishment will bethis fall, light, happy, desolate.

VIGnawed by a fringe of shadow and goldflowers red, black, violet,purer than yourself, therewhere the future hesitatesas the spirit at the centre of sleep is roused,as the silence in the hollow of the stormor liberty in the secrets of its actswhen the word has become so vastthat there is but to meet,a great winged space in the airso, O flowers in yourselves in its turnthe abyss huddles.

VIIIf the look grows if it is the same abyssit can contain and preserve all,but it is not without fear that it welcomesthis flower with heavy lashesgreater than the sea.

VIIIThe whitest a long timehave with sorrowretained the light of evening,the courageous ones!

Soon they will go to burnin the abyss of the sun.

THE FALSE SAILOR

To deliver my lifefrom immobilityI have made great efforts –wrapped in my riggingin my fallen sailsI will gain the harbourI have never left.

Image of myselfbird, cruel formwhich parts and which returnsin the odour of the seaeach turn of your wingoverpowers me with bonds.Wrapped in my riggingin my fallen sailsI will gain the harbour I have never left.

EVEN THOUGH

Even though I saw with my own eyesthe ancestors painted on the picturesdescend from their frame and walk in the thickness of the world

Even though I saw with my own eyesthe roads of the earth rise up into the skygracious and tilted over like fountains

Even though I heard the sun(what, it? Yes the sun the sun)speak to me in a lowered voice call me by my name

Even though I took the statureand the silence and the heaviness of a house

Even though I had found the keyto the great tunnel which traverses the globeand I began the slow slide along its walls

Even though I saw with my own eyesthe Other Side of things swarm

even though even though even though

I would always believe in the sacred realitywhich parting from our hands sinks into the night

THE LITTLE OPTIMIST

From morning I have watched,have watched from the window;have seen the children pass.

An hour later they were grown,another hour, ancient, trembling.

How quickly they aged, I thought!And I who grow young each instant!

MIDDAY

As in the past in my too dear shadowstoday under the waters of the sunI dive … what is this laughterwhich calls me, what is that savour of airand that blue marbled with stains of brightnessin the fishermen’s harbour? Do not answer anymoreif I question! It is “thus”, it is for talking, there is noanswer to the why of pleasurenor anymore to that of anguish, for I knowand I hear and I hear …

Ah! That further off the windtilts at the side of the gulf the red wind of a sailing shipthat the milk of the light, feeble surface,covers the depths of the night, that deathbe nearer than everywhere in the furnaces of midday,I can’t forget, but my lifeis just like this day: the inferno under the smile,one yielding nothing to the other in Truthand my eyes and my bodyconsumed under the sky without dreamsare made in order to know you and be like you,lightning flash of that which movesacross my eyelidstrees reddened by firereflections on the side of the small boatsstone burning in one’s hands.

UNKNOWN JUSTICE

Still it echoes in the other room,that deep voice beyond the screen,it judges, condemns and then pardonsa crime foreign to deep reasoning.

I don’t know if I’m the one who’s guilty,I don’t know if the voice bears a name.

PETRIFIED DAYS

The bandaged eyes the trembling handsdeceived by the sound of my stepswhich carry everywhere my silencelosing the tracks of my days if I wait for or pass myselfalways I find myself again thereas the stone under the sky.

Through the night and through the suncondemned without proof and without faultto the walls of my narrow spaceI turn to the bottom of my sleepdesolate as hopeinnocent like remorse.

A man who pretends to grow oldimprisoned in his infancythe future shines preciselywe will remember it againthe soil trembles at the same place,

time rises like the sea.

THE MASK

An imaginary lifeis laid on all the towns.Everywhere false lightsare painted on the eyelidsof tight-shut windowsThe pale gleaming sunis a mere plaster on the stones.

The real town is in the night.

PRESENCE

We search at the edge of a cloudy waterfor the bursting forth of a secret sun.The assuaged desires are cast to the stumpshere and there under the uncertain day.

Maybe it’s a desk, or a meadowlittered with debris or reliefs, or yetan armchair covered with frightful embroideries?

In any case someone whistlesand another answers.A fine ray flees from sun to ceiling.It’s the moment to laugh and break lifeunder the tapping of our heels.

APARTMENTS

That which one hears through the ceilings,which comes from far-below floors,neither raises nor lowers its pitch.Gravely the syllables dronethe hat falls on the mouth which sang,on the water which runs in the kitchens,all that breaks free and re-echoes.

Let us crouch down in these woollen caves,envelop our laughter and criesand not be dragged by the dayto the floor of a jittery world.

THE SOUND OF THE SEA

The spirit carried toward the sound of the seawhich I cannot hearor toward that space forbidden to starswhose memory I holdI meet the voice the warmththe scent of surprising treesI embrace a mysterious bodyI grasp the hands of friends.

THE SUFFOCATED GODS

The opacity of the walls, silencefallen onto obscure clamours,time where patience sinks,leaden sun on sadnessand the twilights of oneself,iron forms, masks of fire,rocks shut again on the godsdripping with rain and weeping,open, open to those who love them,open your gates which are killing me!

CHRONICLE

... And as he refused to advancehe was hit on the thresholdby a hail of crossfire. Others,for having tried to flee,fell beyond the hills. Still others,pulled out of bed at daybreakwere locked in barnsand the crackle of the fire choked their cries.In the town one died for having talked,others for having kept silentand the dawn broke on a calcined land,the rain and the smoke and the debrishaving erased the frontiers,the roots of all evil.

However,on the other side of the sea,while new massacressmouldered slowly under the ancestral ash,young girls were singing in the churches.

CROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARES

People pursued by their dreams,in deep sleep, in full terror, gatheron some vague terrain open to the flowof the sewers, blacker than night.‘I was running’ says one, ‘and a dog bit mebut the woman beside me was already dying;a horse brought me happiness awaited me…’

The other groans: ‘I left my bodyI changed `the mansion of my faceI didn’t know who I was,moreover when I saw this ring on my finger,I burst into tears without knowing why.’

And all half-naked laughingto the point of breathlessnessform up further on a group shiveringon having discovered a treasureon the cobblestones where nothing shinesbut a shard of a bottleemerald and sapphire in the blood of the stream.

Thus they go, one and the otherurged on by the breath of a dreamwhich carries them, drifting.

DAYS

In a dark town carried along by time(each house in advance collapses with the passing days)I returned, I left with all my shadows.A thousand suns ascended as at the bottom of a river,a thousand others descended, colouring the high walls;I pursued hands on the edge of the balconies;forms paled (the light is on them)or fell into memory (the rays have turned.)The days, the days... who sighs and who calls me,for which feast or which entreaty or which pardon?

THE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACE

This little piece of space is slapped by the spiritas the sky is by the swallowor the paved emptiness by the fragile noiseof a bike seen by people with gloomyeyebrows, their arms loaded with sad parcels.Space, such a thirst! With our stepsso slowly going along the narrow tracksunder the houses where there are no smiles.Time runs past, but the milestone is always there!

O source always present on the roofsdrunk upside down by fevered eyes,force always stronger by its absence,space, join with time to deliverour bodies tortured by hope!

Too little space and too much time. O move away,space, boat crushed in this port,lift the tombstone of these dead,rip your ropes of smoke, leave in the night,make of every window a blessedopening on the freedom of the infinite!

EPITAPH

To break the net of day and seasons,to know what it was, that unknown voice,on the bridge of the sun aloof from my lifeI have stopped.

And the rivers have fled,the shadows recognised,space, white eyes, I listen I speak againI remember everything that has ever been.

HELL AT HOME

In the secrecy of a darkened corridorat the bottom of an uncertain mirrora man comes across his image.

Such he sees, such he wants to be,proud, joyous, triumphantand above all young, like a god!

But the image fades and is lostin the noise of groaning pipesand suddenly his heart fails:

in the glass (which shakes a littlewith each passing car)appears a new occupantslowly, slowly freeing himselfa kind of humpbacked dogwho toward the sky squared by the courtyardshrieks at death and casts a look full of tears.

THE PERILS OF MEMORY

They gather together often, to struggleagainst those most tenacious memories.Each takes his place on an armchairand takes his turn with the story.

First appears the accidentthen love, then sordid regrets,finally the lacklustre hopes.All those pictures are paintedon the wall between flowers on the paper.

They think thus to accustom themselvesto the poisons their memory carries;I though, behind the doorsee the present flee with its secrets.

HOLDERLIN’S GRAVE

The day, the day drones with confused reproachesthe night grumbles and complainsit moans without saying why

The rising sunspeaks to us like a fatherbut we don’t listen to his counsels

Space is inhabited by innumerable fireswhich address us with incomprehensible signalsand time this long whileharries our memorylike a face impossible to find again.Alone after long days of walkingI often go on foot to this theatre of shadesand before the deserted stageI keep vigil with the tightened heartcalling without echothose great actors who after a hundred thousand yearsreign over our ingratitudeand speak without making themselves heard.

Forest, why still be silent?Waken up and walk! Sky,why close your eyes in broad daylight?Mixed with the golden chains of the sunare the treasures hidden by your night! Returnnear to us, distant spaces! May our timesbe mingled, may all,past, present, future, together be givento the indomitable spirit which hopes for youand waits for you!...

And if, from this tumultcomes a voice, unique, gentlydominating the thunder, and that Smilestronger than the mortal combat of the elements,may we be finally instructedin that unalterable peacewhich has been sown in the spirit of mansince the first day!

But nothing comes by way of responsebut the sound of his heart, and always the silence of the worldappears alone to announce the word and always,in us, immense voices go, growing fainter,with the memory of the Promise,like a storm moving slowly away!

WHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEART

When the night of my heart descends into my handsand from my hands into the water which bathes everything:having plunged there I rise again nakedin every image:a word for each leaf a gesture for each shade‘It is I who hears you it is I who knows youand it is I who changes you.’

THE CHILD-EXECUTIONER

The terrified child covers his eyes with his arms,but the Man descends, growing bigger with every step.The child calls for helpfrom earth and heaven. But the Man with each step grown greater and heaviercries: ‘You have seen what you shouldn’t have,you’re going to die!’ And his fist is raised, his eyes blazing.

The child makes a last effortto break away from this worldand just as the executioner is about to reach himhe becomes the smoke from a brush fireand is loosed by the wind.

And the vagabond on the cold grass sways,shaken by sobs.

I DON’T EXPECT

I don’t expect a god purer than this same day:it rises I see it my life is in its hands:the earth which stretches under the trees I loveprolongs in the sky the rivers the roads...

I go I have a hundred thousand years for this sweet journey.

MEMENTO MORI

Beside the gilded panelling of the officesthere the corridors thread in the endless mirrors,each door, each pillarhides a killer who yawns, bored:time is long and surety is thin.

Nevertheless, outside in the shadow of furnitureas in a gate, sheltering from raina woman stands, gleaming like a pane,watches with empty eyes.

The sea had rolled along the avenues:tomorrow, sand under the tread of the caravans.And the archaeologist among the rockswill confuse our centuries and our daysand the conch of a rusted phonewill deliver him no secretof the humming of our words.

NATURE

It is a bird which approaches, weepingit is a cloud which speaks while dreaminga rock rolls to mark timea reed admires itself in the glass of a pondthe trees of the forestare there, like people, like people.All these make a waiting crowd,but man – gone, gone, gone...

IS IT A BEAST?

Is it a man or a beast? He runs,terrified, haggard, between the briars,shoes heavy, face and handsbleeding. Bells clang in his headand the taste of death is in his mouth.

Where to go? To the left? The branches crackle under boots.To the right? the dogs snarl. And, before him,bullets make the puddles spurt.

Then he charges, haphazardly. The open ground,white under the sun, appears. Alas, no shade!Not a ditch, not a tree, not the leastshelter into which he can fall before the executioners come!Already the baying, more numerous and nearer,reverberatesand suddenly, there, there in the tall grass,one of the pursuers rises and fires! Anothera little further off, then two, then ten, then a hundred.The horizon swarms and gleamswith helmets, rifles, harnesses,the light of machine guns. The man falls,leaps up again, manages a few paces, totters,ragged in a dust of dark bloodand collapses, still at last, while from the side,a reedy bugle rasps.

A thousand men for the death of only one? Was it a dream?Was it not rather,in a valley touched by the autumn sun,the creaking of a cart,the gleam of light on applesand the rags of a scarecrowshaken by the peaceful wind?...

NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER

What to say, what to think? The dayby its insistence on appearing,confess it, confess it,exhausts its best friends.

The night, on the other hand, is sly,blending in at every instant,it beats on our eyelidsit creeps around objects:worrying, worrying!

As for that nameless thingwhich is neither night nor day,lower your voice I advise you;better not to speak of it here!

ON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGE

On the earth where the days merge,trembling with having seen again a flower,I crush the blood from my heartin the hard walls of this world.

I abandon to the night its delightsnear the edges glimpsed through closed eyes;

the sand is sown with poppiesto master time as it slips past.

Till tomorrow, tender day, till tomorrow!stay young sleeping under the shoreI carry the flame still litin the shelter of my faithful hands.

A stubborn and avaricious traveller,facing the approaching flood,I seek the country of rocksthe last captive growls.

DILEMMA

I’ve seen barriersI’ve collided with themit was pure spirit.

I’ve seen leeksI’ve eaten themit was nature.

No further!Always barriersalways leeks!

Ah! If I couldleave the leeksbehind the barriersthe key under the gateand set off somewhere elseto speak of other things!

THE IMMOBILE WORLD

Pits of twilightdeaf fountainlake without brightness

thick presencefeeble beatingthere is the instant

nothing no onea heavy shadowand its silence

I wait centuriesnothing echoesnothing appears

on this tombspace movesit’s my thought

for no lookfor no earthe truth.

TIME GONE

The hour the days the years which consume us,that time is no more, we have passed itwe will go no more on the sonorous riverbanks;the white foam and the hair of horsesunder the sky fixed in piled heapslike bones which a lone crow decorates(a black icicle, remnant of a breathshines sleeping all around its nostrils)such are the designs which we have traced.

We will go no more along the waterswe will go no more to defy the clouds,we lamenting the death of the seasonswe will have no more clamours nor tears…

We will be there as are all other thingsthe standing tree which floats in its own shadowthe white sun which turns around us,the peace of the day, its invincible arms.

We will be there calm and profitablewithout a sigh in our rows of reedspraising the sun because it gathers us togetherpraising the sky because it resembles usbecause it is our deep silencebecause it sleeps in our weaknessbecause it gleams in our verityand our eyes serene once more gazeas another immobile time comes up.

WE WILL GO NO FURTHER

One (who passed us) tapped us on the shoulders‘Let’s run there!’.. ‘But where?’… ‘I don’t know!’He who spoke to us was shaking our shoulders.An identical wind tilted towards the horizonour faces ravaged by glimmers of blood.We shrieked appeals and cries of ragewhich prowled in the night like severed hands.

But why those fragments on the old carriages?Because we were from the same family.

And why such love and why such hate?Because we were on a desert island.

ISLE DE FRANCE

I wandered beside your facepoplars canals and palacesacross the roofs the cloudsyou spoke low-voiced I listened

I wandered beside your shoresyou but a smile, a dreamyour rocks your hands your thunderstormsa dream to me in the sun